The two specs are very similar in sims right now, and (from my experience) they perform similarly in raids. The point where people are saying Combat is "on par" is actually the point where Combat breaks way out ahead. And by T16, the scaling Combat will receive will put it on-par with Assassination naturally.

They are similar in sims, but in practice? I had no problems ranking on stuff back in t14 as assassination, but this tier as combat, if I were competing for ranks on the assassination list, there are quite a few fights where I would be below 90% of the rank limit or more (now this still gets me really high combat ranks). It could be that I am just too low on gear; I had the 4pc for a couple weeks but my ilvl was only 515 until I got crafted boots and the heroic jin rokh helm tuesday putting me still only at 519 after which I havent killed anything.

To be fair, I generally handily beat our other rogues (2 of which are assassination), but we all know 'omg but i beat everyone in my raid as X spec' isn't really useful information. I'm thinking about trying assassination, but we have had 2 daggers drop (1 TF) the entire tier and I don't really want to put in on a dagger when our assassination rogues really need them just so I can compare specs and maybe switch (have a 522 combat weapon, think everyone has at least 1 that uses 2.6 agi weapons now so maybe a 2nd soon).

Originally Posted by D3athsting

If you play in a hardcore/semi-hardcore guild when a RL looks at recount and sees you near tanks as dps he cares very little if the spec you like and play is broken or op but will let you know that your dmg is low and can compromise guild progress so you can either go assass or be benched.

This a hypothetical situation or are you suggesting combat dps is under tanks?

Look i was venting cause to me in order to raid i MUST play a spec i hardly enjoy. I know all my rogue specs but personally i Love combat, i've adapted to all the crap they went through but it's a repetitive cycle that is getting tiring. I've seen this done to other classes too. So my question was what will happen to combat in the future without T15? yes i know Blizz prob is onto this, it's like me knowing i need to mow the lawns, i'll do it when am ready or my wife gets irate so right now am irate to blizz to fix the damn game for all classes and specs.

I was in that scenario and felt compelled to play assassination. Then after reflection I considered two things.

1: I'm not in a world first or even world 5000th guild. I don't need bleeding edge performance and our progression is slow enough that gear will take us to new kills
2: I don't particularly enjoy playing assassination and our guild/raid leader doesn't want anyone playing a spec they don't enjoy

So, I'm playing combat.

---------- Post added 2013-04-18 at 03:27 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Carp The Fish

The two specs are very similar in sims right now, and (from my experience) they perform similarly in raids. The point where people are saying Combat is "on par" is actually the point where Combat breaks way out ahead. And by T16, the scaling Combat will receive will put it on-par with Assassination naturally.

They're reasonably similar on patchwerk sims. Combat is far far more sensitive to encounter mechanics and falls way behind once there is movement or other interruptions. In fact, the only specs in my studies from simcraft that are less forgiving than combat to player skill and encounter complexity are arcane mages, and 1h & 2h windwalkers.

I'm not sure about other servers, but on Illidan and our instance servers, input lag (where you press an ability and it takes over a second for it to go off) makes combat unplayable for the most part. During the initial AR/SB, I miss around 6-9 globals worth of damage, because even though I have a .5sec GCD, it takes 1-1.5sec for an ability to even go off. It's incredibly annoying, and it happens as Assassination as well, but it's not nearly as penalizing to Assassination.

Assassination is middle-of-the-road in terms of forgiveness to encounter mechanics. It's the single most forgiving spec in the game for rotational mistakes.

And that definitely adds up when it's counted into ToT fights - they aren't difficult, but they are filled with different mechanics; being able to focus more on them while doing still a decent damage is extremely valuable for the majority of players.

I mean, top guilds have extremely skilled players which basically can play whatever spec in whatever enviroment. Standard guild with normal/bad people which are still progressing through normal get a bigger impact from that.

Honestly i love combat but seems for me to get into raids i NEED to be Assass. Blizz says they up Combat damage and blah blah BS but only way a combat can be effective is with a 4pc tier... now my question is WTF in gods blue earth will happen in 5.4??? I honestly do not think all the Tiers will have the same stats as now...

Anyway am giving up the game cause I really do not like assass and will not feel pressured to do so. so am sell/give away my account

Infracted

This reminds me of that lock on the official forums that made a thread titled "Im naked" or something. She threw a fit because she saw corruption and a few other abilities on the patch notes, assumed they were major nerfs, de'd all of her gear, cries about rerolling, and realized they were only tooltip changes and now is doing a restoration for the gear she had de'd. People are so impulsive, and control freakish about this game. It's hilarious.

If you play in a hardcore/semi-hardcore guild when a RL looks at recount and sees you near tanks as dps he cares very little if the spec you like and play is broken or op but will let you know that your dmg is low and can compromise guild progress so you can either go assass or be benched.

first off, tank DPS is inflated in raids because of vengeance. it's not unheard of to see DPS below the tanks, especially if it's a paladin tank.

secondly, you're missing the point. What i'm saying is that every boss in every raid has a DPS requirement that's quantifiable by dividing the HP by the enrage timer or the maximum uptime if the boss isn't attackable all the time. for lei shen normal, this is around 105-110K DPS, depending on your raidsize and how many DPS you have. every class can achieve that in T14 heroic gear, and you have at least 22 T15 normal pieces before you reach lei shen (2 per boss, not counting valor and trash drops), possibly even some thunderforged gear. and that's assuming that you reach him in the first week. if it takes you longer, you're going to have close to 510-515 average itemlevel in your raid. EVERY class and EVERY spec can achieve 110K DPS in 515 gear if played right. My 497 paladin reaches 110K on spirit kings LFR if I play him right, and that fight isn't the most melee friendly, and paladins are the worst DPS spec in the game right now.

my point is that if a boss requires 110K DPS to kill, and the DPS check to prevent complications is lower than that, if every player in the raid can reach that DPS regardless of spec, the spec doesn't matter. the boss will die regardless of whether your potential maximum DPS is 130K DPS or 150K DPS, because both are higher than 110K DPS.

and i'm not even touching on the fact that a player that knows a spec in detail will usually perform better in that spec than in a spec he's not familiar in. if combat does 90% of the DPS assassination does, but you can reach 90% efficiency in combat but only 80% in assassination because you don't like the spec, you're going to do more DPS in combat than in assassination.

Currently only reading the Funny Pictures Megathread because the rest of the forums is filled with piss, whiners and pissed whiners.

This reminds me of that lock on the official forums that made a thread titled "Im naked" or something. She threw a fit because she saw corruption and a few other abilities on the patch notes, assumed they were major nerfs, de'd all of her gear, cries about rerolling, and realized they were only tooltip changes and now is doing a restoration for the gear she had de'd. People are so impulsive, and control freakish about this game. It's hilarious.

That is so true. If I only would go after what others say, I would respecc to assassin and "go with the flow". Now I am a die-hard combat fan and always has been, got a decent non-dagger MH and lo and behold, I'm doing decent damage, not too far after assa rogues on single-target fights (with some luck and good timing even on par) and doing really well on cleave fights like council or stone guardian.

I personally don't mind Combat being a little far behind at the moment, Assassination was far behind in Cataclysm.

BUT

The nerf to blade flurry was unnecessary. "Combat felt mandatory", how about improving the other speccs then, instead of nerfing combat? This is backways thinking, weird logic, and a very poor solution. However, I would not mind, I could play Assassination as well

IF

They changed Combat a bit more. At the moment, you can't play Combat with Daggers in the Main hand. You simply can't, daggers are completly worthless in Main Hand for combat rogues. But Subtlety and Assassination both uses Daggers in Main Hand. WHAT GIVES!? You can switch from Sub to Assa easy, but the transition from- and to Combat doesn't really exist, cause your weapon will be shit! If you go Raidfinder as combat, you will get daggers still, but if you go Assassination, you won't get other 1hands, which is really weird. There is no smooth crossover, and Rogue is the only core-DPS class (mage, hunter, warlock, rogue) that has this situation. All other core-DPS classes can keep the same weapons and simply reforge a little to make it work.

I personally don't mind Combat being a little far behind at the moment, Assassination was far behind in Cataclysm.

BUT

The nerf to blade flurry was unnecessary. "Combat felt mandatory", how about improving the other speccs then, instead of nerfing combat? This is backways thinking, weird logic, and a very poor solution. However, I would not mind, I could play Assassination as well

IF

They changed Combat a bit more. At the moment, you can't play Combat with Daggers in the Main hand. You simply can't, daggers are completly worthless in Main Hand for combat rogues. But Subtlety and Assassination both uses Daggers in Main Hand. WHAT GIVES!? You can switch from Sub to Assa easy, but the transition from- and to Combat doesn't really exist, cause your weapon will be shit! If you go Raidfinder as combat, you will get daggers still, but if you go Assassination, you won't get other 1hands, which is really weird. There is no smooth crossover, and Rogue is the only core-DPS class (mage, hunter, warlock, rogue) that has this situation. All other core-DPS classes can keep the same weapons and simply reforge a little to make it work.

warriors have a similar situation: if you from Arms to SMF, you can't use your 2H. you can if you go TG. however, if you go from SMF to Arms or TG, you can't keep your weapons as well. if you go TG to SMF, you also can't keep your weapons, but you can if you go Arms. Fury gets both 1H and 2H, but arms gets only 2H.

Currently only reading the Funny Pictures Megathread because the rest of the forums is filled with piss, whiners and pissed whiners.

I'm not sure about other servers, but on Illidan and our instance servers, input lag (where you press an ability and it takes over a second for it to go off) makes combat unplayable for the most part. During the initial AR/SB, I miss around 6-9 globals worth of damage, because even though I have a .5sec GCD, it takes 1-1.5sec for an ability to even go off. It's incredibly annoying, and it happens as Assassination as well, but it's not nearly as penalizing to Assassination.

This, completely. It has also much to do with raid size, and Combat is clearly superior in 10m than it is in 25m.

The two specs are very similar in sims right now, and (from my experience) they perform similarly in raids. The point where people are saying Combat is "on par" is actually the point where Combat breaks way out ahead. And by T16, the scaling Combat will receive will put it on-par with Assassination naturally.

They don't perform similarly in raids though, and Assa is ahead by a good margin, between 10 to 15% on most boss, less on some bosses (e.g. Council).

This ain't 100% true. Start of cata favored assa, firelands combat a bit and ds was all mostly about sub except the in your face dragon fight.

There wasn't any sub rogue during DS progression (for guilds that killed Madness before the 5% nerf).

To be fair, I generally handily beat our other rogues (2 of which are assassination), but we all know 'omg but i beat everyone in my raid as X spec' isn't really useful information.

I think it is though, if everyone in your raid is at a same and top level, which translates by getting constant top15 ranks in 10m / top50 in 25 (once all hardcore guilds made their logs public and considering the total number of players of said spec, obviously).

Quitting because you love Combat but Assass is ahead? Wow, opposite day.

But to the matter at hand: can I has your stuff?

---------- Post added 2013-04-19 at 01:26 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Draigars

There wasn't any sub rogue during DS progression (for guilds that killed Madness before the 5% nerf).

The hell? KIN Raiders got their clutch Spine kill by filling their roster with Sub Rogues and Arc Mages. Sub was very strong in DS, only fights it wasn't good on were Ultra and Madness where you couldn't get behind.

The hell? KIN Raiders got their clutch Spine kill by filling their roster with Sub Rogues and Arc Mages. Sub was very strong in DS, only fights it wasn't good on were Ultra and Madness where you couldn't get behind.

You could backstab both the limb tentacle and the mutated corruption. You could still backstab on madness, you just couldn't use the damage component of shadowstep because THAT would drop you to death. The only encounter in DS that you couldn't backstab/ambush was ultraxion (and perhaps drakes on blackhorn, if you had melee on them).

The hell? KIN Raiders got their clutch Spine kill by filling their roster with Sub Rogues and Arc Mages. Sub was very strong in DS, only fights it wasn't good on were Ultra and Madness where you couldn't get behind.

By DS I meant all 8 boss but Spine obviously, in which pretty much every rogue was sub for the tendons burst (some were assa in 10m though to provide CoE debuff).

There wasn't any sub rogue during DS progression (for guilds that killed Madness before the 5% nerf).

I'm pretty sure people got their daggers before the 5% nerf which would mean you are wrong because sub started to pop up immediately the week people started to get their legendaries. You are wrong anyway though, people used it on Morchok where it was absolutely superior. You will probably discount that because the fight was overall easy and the dps requirement wasn't hard enough to really need that... but now you are discounting 25% of the raid.

Originally Posted by Scrooge McDuck

secondly, you're missing the point. What i'm saying is that every boss in every raid has a DPS requirement that's quantifiable by dividing the HP by the enrage timer or the maximum uptime if the boss isn't attackable all the time. for lei shen normal, this is around 105-110K DPS, depending on your raidsize and how many DPS you have. every class can achieve that in T14 heroic gear, and you have at least 22 T15 normal pieces before you reach lei shen (2 per boss, not counting valor and trash drops), possibly even some thunderforged gear. and that's assuming that you reach him in the first week. if it takes you longer, you're going to have close to 510-515 average itemlevel in your raid. EVERY class and EVERY spec can achieve 110K DPS in 515 gear if played right. My 497 paladin reaches 110K on spirit kings LFR if I play him right, and that fight isn't the most melee friendly, and paladins are the worst DPS spec in the game right now.

my point is that if a boss requires 110K DPS to kill, and the DPS check to prevent complications is lower than that, if every player in the raid can reach that DPS regardless of spec, the spec doesn't matter. the boss will die regardless of whether your potential maximum DPS is 130K DPS or 150K DPS, because both are higher than 110K DPS.

and i'm not even touching on the fact that a player that knows a spec in detail will usually perform better in that spec than in a spec he's not familiar in. if combat does 90% of the DPS assassination does, but you can reach 90% efficiency in combat but only 80% in assassination because you don't like the spec, you're going to do more DPS in combat than in assassination.

First off, your last example... you're wrong. Also based on how forgiving assassination is compared to combat, I really doubt you could pull less of a percentage of the maximum with assassination if you are able to pull 90% as combat... but it is just a theoretical example so I'll just go with your numbers and tell you that you're wrong.

Secondly, you really are the one missing the point. Raids always have the entire raid alive on first kills right? Bosses like Lei Shen aren't substantially easier with a bit more dps? In fact the vast majority of fights this tier get quite a bit easier as you get more dps. Shortening the fight also decreases the window people have to make mistakes. Just because you technically are meeting the hard enrage doesn't mean you don't have a dps issue.

first off, tank DPS is inflated in raids because of vengeance. it's not unheard of to see DPS below the tanks, especially if it's a paladin tank.

Are you finding this to be true single targets? If a dps is below a tank, I would look for a reason. Is 25 substantially different than 10s?

Last tier, the only fight this was true for was windlord (the one with the blades), because he had a bunch of adds.

EVERY class and EVERY spec can achieve 110K DPS in 515 gear if played right. My 497 paladin reaches 110K on spirit kings LFR if I play him right, and that fight isn't the most melee friendly, and paladins are the worst DPS spec in the game right now.

Ret is seriously below moonkin now? I can't get to raidbots from work, but I suspect there are several specs below ret still.

the boss will die regardless of whether your potential maximum DPS is 130K DPS or 150K DPS, because both are higher than 110K DPS.

The faster a boss dies, the less mechanics. This is doubly so in the case of say, Iron Qon, who gets much harder to kill in his final phase. I do agree that reg modes at least are all balanced around the lower dps values, but it is still better for the raid for more damage to go out- and a player not bringing his A game will hold you back in heroics regardless.

if combat does 90% of the DPS assassination does, but you can reach 90% efficiency in combat but only 80% in assassination because you don't like the spec, you're going to do more DPS in combat than in assassination.

I would generally agree, but in the case of assassination and combat I do not. Combat is a flurry of buttons with a half second GCD at times this tier, and a .8 second GCD much of the time. You have to react to procs stupendously quickly at times- for instance, if you press SS, there is always some lag before the computer registers that it went 2 CP instead of 1, etc. If a rogue is capable of playing combat at 90% efficiency, it should take relatively little effort for such a skilled player to learn mutilate to 90% or more, a spec with less procs and without the general expectation of slammed together globals.

---------- Post added 2013-04-19 at 09:17 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Draigars

By DS I meant all 8 boss but Spine obviously, in which pretty much every rogue was sub for the tendons burst (some were assa in 10m though to provide CoE debuff).

Thought it was obvious.

Dude, there's 8 bosses. Why would you ignore one of them? I think that's more an oversight on your part. Sub was ABSOLUTELY CLUTCH to progression last tier- over 10% of fights needed it to progress! So pretending that sub didn't show up during progression is silly.

I'm not sure about other servers, but on Illidan and our instance servers, input lag (where you press an ability and it takes over a second for it to go off) makes combat unplayable for the most part. During the initial AR/SB, I miss around 6-9 globals worth of damage, because even though I have a .5sec GCD, it takes 1-1.5sec for an ability to even go off. It's incredibly annoying, and it happens as Assassination as well, but it's not nearly as penalizing to Assassination.

My server-lag on Ravenholdt is 70ms (usually). In 10-mans, this means Combat is playable because the input lag is (maybe) 3-4 globals on a regular fight. If I was 25-man, I'd probably be in your same boat where I'd be missing 6-9 globals per AR.

...well, at least there's (at least) 1.75 specs that work for raiding.

Combat's issues are more than just a modifiers issue at this point. Mechanically, it's just not working. The vastly reduced GCD sounds really good on paper, but the reality is that it's pretty obvious that the game was not built to handle spamable abilities at the sub-one second GCD. Especially in a 25 man raid environment, it's just way to common to lose a bunch GCDs over those 12-15 seconds during CDs due to input lag. Another solution needs to be found to deal with Combat's issue of energy and GCD capping because the current one is just hurting the spec more than it's helping it.